The wildly popular fantasy HBO TV series 'Game of Thrones' will be returning for its sixth season later this month, and in advance of this a team of US-based researchers have applied a mathematical algorithm to ask the most ...

Scientists in Brazil are using a genetic algorithm to create a realistic soundscape of birdsong that can be triggered by updates from the micro-blogging service, Twitter, which celebrates its tenth anniversary this year. ...

Rice University bioengineers have introduced a fast computational method to model tissue-specific metabolic pathways. Their algorithm may help researchers find new therapeutic targets for cancer and other diseases.

A team of researchers from Norway and Germany has come up with a computer algorithm that analyses sound recordings that quantify how various noises change over time, allowing for studying the sounds whales make in a new way. ...

Researchers from North Carolina State University and the University of Delaware have developed an algorithm that can quickly and accurately reconstruct hyperspectral images using less data. The images are created using instruments ...

Developing humanoid robotic technology to perform difficult tasks in aircraft manufacturing facilities is the goal of a four-year joint research project, which is being conducted by the Joint Robotics Laboratory (CNRS/AIST) ...

Planning algorithms are widely used in logistics and control. They can help schedule flights and bus routes, guide autonomous robots, and determine control policies for the power grid, among other things.

A UCLA Engineering research group has made public the computer code for an algorithm that helps computers process images at high speeds and "see" them in ways that human eyes cannot. The researchers say the code could eventually ...

Algorithm

In mathematics, computing, linguistics, and related subjects, an algorithm is a finite sequence of instructions, an explicit, step-by-step procedure for solving a problem, often used for calculation and data processing. It is formally a type of effective method in which a list of well-defined instructions for completing a task, will when given an initial state, proceed through a well-defined series of successive states, eventually terminating in an end-state. The transition from one state to the next is not necessarily deterministic; some algorithms, known as probabilistic algorithms, incorporate randomness.

A partial formalization of the concept began with attempts to solve the Entscheidungsproblem (the "decision problem") posed by David Hilbert in 1928. Subsequent formalizations were framed as attempts to define "effective calculability" (Kleene 1943:274) or "effective method" (Rosser 1939:225); those formalizations included the Gödel-Herbrand-Kleene recursive functions of 1930, 1934 and 1935, Alonzo Church's lambda calculus of 1936, Emil Post's "Formulation 1" of 1936, and Alan Turing's Turing machines of 1936–7 and 1939.